Making a Will in Jamaica: What Makes It Valid and What It Can Do

A Will names the people who are to receive what you own and the person who is to deal with it, the executor. It does not avoid probate. The executor still applies to the Supreme Court for a Grant of Probate, and the grant is what gives the executor authority over the estate. Its value is that it leaves the court and your executor a clear, properly signed record of what you wanted.

A Will is in writing and signed at the end by the person making it, in front of two witnesses who are present at the same time. The witnesses then sign in that person's presence. A person under 18 cannot make a valid Will.

Get the order wrong, or have the witnesses sign on different days, and the Will can be challenged after death, when the one person who could explain it is gone.

A beneficiary can act as a witness and the Will does not fall for it. But a gift to a witness, or to the witness's husband or wife, is in most cases void. The rest of the Will stands and that one person receives nothing. A Will signed with us has two independent witnesses who take nothing under it.

Where the person making the Will is elderly, seriously ill, unable to read or making an unexpected change, questions of capacity and of pressure from others can be raised later. Those Wills are drawn and signed with care and the circumstances are recorded.

Some property never passes under a Will. Land held as joint tenants goes to the surviving joint tenant on death, whatever the Will says. An insurance policy, a pension or an account with a valid nomination may pass to the nominated person outside the estate. The title, the account mandate and the policy terms decide this, not what the family believes. Before a Will is drawn we read the title and ask how each major asset is held, so the Will does not give away what it cannot give.

Marriage revokes a Will, subject to a narrow exception in the law. The Will you signed before your wedding is in most cases gone. Separation, divorce, the birth of a child, the death of an executor or a beneficiary, a major purchase or sale and a move abroad are all reasons to have the Will read again.

Tell the executor where the original is kept, and do not write on it or remove the staples after signing. A mark that looks like an alteration has to be explained to the court later, at a cost to the estate.

Jamaica's law on Wills, the Wills Act, sets these signing rules. A separate law lets a spouse, child or other dependant who was left without provision ask the court for a share, so we ask about dependants before the Will is drawn.

Come in with the names of the people you want to provide for and we will take it from there.